Yiddish studies center to open in Israel

JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

January 17, 2010,

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is establishing Israel's newest center for Yiddish studies.

David Roskies, a professor of Yiddish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, has been tapped to head the new center in Beersheba.

The center will host workshops and colloquia, publish forgotten Yiddish works, and collaborate with Yiddish research centers in Tel Aviv, Paris and Amherst, Mass.

University officials say the center is "catering to the increasing interest in Yiddish culture in Israel," and aims to enable a new generation of Yiddish scholars to continue academic studies of the language and its literature into the 21st century.